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@Linguist_CIOL JUNE/JULY The Linguist 11 FEATURES of clothes and toothbrush. You won't be able to communicate with anyone for the 48 hours, and may not bring a mobile or laptop. Would you take the job? How would you prepare? In suspected cases of human trafficking, this approach to booking linguists is sometimes essential to the success of the operation. The police may have to plan a raid on an address or series of locations to pick up suspects, victims and witnesses; it won't be clear who is who. Many of them will be highly vulnerable and traumatised, perhaps including children. They may be hungry, injured or suffering from serious diseases, and are likely to be terrified by the raid, often conducted in the early hours of the morning when they are asleep. Interpreters may need to attend the raid itself, to allow officers to communicate with those being taken to Red Cross reception centres, where hours of interviews will be needed to ascertain whether crimes are being committed, and who the victims and suspects are. Secrecy is needed to ensure the operation's success, particularly where a small close-knit linguistic community is involved. The professional and ethical challenges are many and acute. They can often be attributed to conflicts between two different professional perspectives, and these can be particularly difficult to navigate in transnational organised crime contexts. Consider the interpreter's need to prepare (even if just very brief details, such as the name and crime type) versus the police need for confidentiality or secrecy. Linguists reported arriving at the police station to learn they have been booked to interpret for a member of their own family, for instance. From the police perspective, investigators have raised concerns at what they perceive as linguists' refusal to assist them. Interpreters see themselves as neutral, rather than employed to help the police, but their police clients often do not, and voice frustration that linguists will not answer questions such as "Do you think he's really from where he says he is?". Repeatedly in our interviews, both linguists and police have raised hard and important ethical problems. These can be categorised in three groups: ethical duties and dilemmas for linguists; ethical duties to linguists; and ethical duties and dilemmas in ensuring justice is served. For instance, what should linguists do when they witness bad practice by other linguists, or by their client (the police)? Linguists usually work in isolation. The content in police settings is highly confidential and may involve achieving a difficult balance between justice, individual human rights and effective policing against a ticking clock. Police have access to training, mentors, colleagues and support, but linguists often do not. Even CIOL members who engage in continuing professional development and network with fellow members run the risk of vicarious trauma and desensitisation, given the nature of this work. And what about the untrained, unqualified bilinguals who are called on when no professional linguist is available? Do we, as trainers, qualified linguists or professional associations, have a duty of care to them, and the victims, witnesses, suspects and police they are trying to help? These are difficult questions. In the case of support for untrained bilinguals, training the clients (i.e. the police) is likely to be the only way to reach them, making it all the more important that national guidance and training are as effective as they can be. Next steps Work continues on the TOCAT project until September, with our focus shifting to a trial of the translated guidance and training in Belgium. Will this approach, devised and tested in the UK in English, be useful for officers working in Dutch in Belgium? In transnational organised crime contexts, it seems important – and ethical – to ensure that any practice demonstrated to be effective is shared widely across national borders. We are conducting further interviews with linguists for certain 'rare' languages (i.e. difficult to source in UK justice settings), particularly those with experience in human trafficking cases. The police guidance and training materials are undergoing further review to take account of the evidence and feedback gathered during our research, ready for the approved version to be embedded in training nationally later this year. This is an abridged version of the Threlford Memorial Lecture delivered at Members' Day 2018. To hear the lecture in full, visit www.ciol.org.uk/ciol-agm-members-day-2018. The results of the TOCAT project will be presented at a conference on 14 September at Europe House, London. To join the provisional attendance list, email j.drugan@uea.ac.uk or contact the project team via www.crimeandtranslation.com. Notes 1 Beare, M (2003), Critical Reflections on Transnational Organized Crime, Money Laundering and Corruption. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 3 2 'Transnational Organized Crime: The globalized illegal economy', United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, www.unodc.org/documents/toc/ factsheets/TOC12_fs_general_EN_HIRES.pdf 3 Ibid. 4 Allum, F and Gilmour, S (2011), Routledge Handbook of Transnational Organised Crime. London: Routledge, 2 5 'Multi-Agency Review of the Services provided to Victims of Child Sexual Exploitation in Kent' (2016), Kent Safeguarding Children Board 6 Drugan, J and Kredens, K (2018) 'Translation in Superdiverse Legal Contexts'. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity. London: Routledge GLOBAL PICTURE: Map showing the main transnational organised crime flows around the world UNODC